The meaning of life?

When was the last time you heard something controversial? Was it the debates around Col. Gadaffi’s death this week, or the circumstances of Liam Fox’s friendship with Adam Werrity or maybe you’ve made a controversial decision at home or work and it hasn’t gone down too well with the people you love or your colleagues? And of course, what is controversial to one would seem natural and common sense to another! That is the annoying thing about being human – not everyone agrees with you, even when you are right!

Having read these chapters in Matthew’s gospel I am left wondering if Jesus loved being controversial? Was it a ploy to get people thinking and engaging with what they had taken for granted their entire lives? Was Jesus pushing the people to the edge to see God in the light he was supposed to be seen in? What do you think Jesus was doing?

In the previous few verses Jesus has just had a showdown with the Sadducees and his answer has sent them away shamed faced with their dodgy theology of not believing there is a resurrection. But now, the Pharisees have a turn at trying to catch Jesus out with a difficult question. So, they send in their best scholar, an expert in the Law to ask Jesus about the Law of Moses.

The expert opens his question in an extraordinary, almost patronising way by calling him ‘Teacher’. You would have thought that they would have learned by now that Jesus can see through their hypocrisy of trying to trick him into giving an answer that would contradict their Laws, and the expert asks: ‘which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

Now imagine for a moment if someone came along and asked you, ‘which is the greatest law in the UK?’ I think I would be stumped for an answer, it’s not something I think about all that much, but I may be forced to come up with one thing – maybe, don’t drive too fast, or don’t harm children or maybe even pay your taxes. Jesus doesn’t even take a moment to ponder, verse 37 says, Jesus replied…and what did he reply? ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.’

Summarising the Law of Moses is no mean feat – where would we begin in summarising our own country’s law into one sentence? In Matthew’s account of this story Jesus uses two passages from the Torah and brings them together – Deuteronomy and Leviticus. What Jesus is pointing out to the Pharisees is that God is first in everything, even before the Law and when we realise God is first we then love God with everything we have, everything we are! Heart, soul and mind are not different parts of a person but different ways of thinking of the whole person in their relationship to God.

Our mind gives our intellectual commitment to God, our soul, our emotional commitment to God, our heart is the hub of a person and drives us and it gives all we are to something or not. Jesus said in Matthew 6 ‘that for where our treasure is, there our heart is also.’ God made our whole being to be in relationship with Him, not just parts of us and God is seeking a holistic commitment from us and Jesus is spelling this out to the Pharisees. It’s not easy being a disciple of Christ and Jesus was making this plain.

The scholar asked what is the greatest law and Jesus not only gives one example, he gives more than what was asked just to show that he knows what the Law is about and he gives a second – ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’

We receive more than we expect from Jesus and with this comes a greater expectation from him that we give not just more of ourselves, but our whole selves to God and to others. The Law is a living relationship between God and people, not a cold, complicated and unattainable set of rules that the Pharisees have made it into.

Love is at the heart of it all. When we take the heart out of something it dies but Jesus renews us with his love.

We were learning in our house group this week that the Bible begins with ‘Dear Phil’ and ends ‘Love God’. The Bible is one long story of a relationship between God and his people and how much he loves us and how much he wants us to love each other and in the end, no matter what has happened, the good news of Jesus is that LOVE WINS!

We talk about the love of God all the time but it is the one thing that is most misunderstood. We can get so used to it that we don’t listen anymore and sometimes not even believe it, but here in this passage Jesus puts it right back on the agenda – Paul says in Romans 13 and Galatians 5 that ‘love is the fulfilment of the law’. As Christian disciples, as followers of Jesus we should sit up and try and understand what it means to love as Jesus meant us to:

Love DEMANDS – from us a sacrifice of our whole being, heart, soul and mind to God and to each other. In this sacrifice that is supposed to hurt sometimes we find that…

LOVE is SUBVERSIVE – what Jesus was asking us to do was something outrageously different to the norm. By loving one another, particularly our enemies we are actually standing out from the crowd and Jesus says that we should known by this!

LOVE is DIFFERENT – It’s easy to join in the jokes about others; its easy to walk by someone needing help; it’s easy to get stressed and angry with others. But to love! That’s something that takes effort, every moment of every day.

LOVE is the GREATEST above all – Paul tells the church in Corinth that without love we are nothing at all, we have faith in God, we have our hope in Christ but the greatest of things is love and in this dialogue with the Pharisees Jesus is asking us, ‘what are you going to let define you?’ Do we make love our first choice?

If there is real love for God then there will inevitably be real love for our neighbour because this outrageous love of God penetrates our entire being, it is infectious and as a living response we are to be equally outrageous and infectious with God’s love – when someone asks you to define Jesus, our answer is, LOVE. When someone asks you to define you – our answer is, LOVE because of what God has done for you. The underlying message of Matthew 22 verses 39to 41 is this: “Never forget.” Never forget what God has done for you and that is – has loved you and has died for you. So, go – and love one another as Christ has loved you!